For roughly the last year I’ve had two pictures stuck right next to each other on the desktop of my computer. About once a week I look at them intently and ponder. Here’s the first one, undated but found in the Bud Morehead collection which suggests early 1980s:

And the second, taken myself in July of 2015 while on a lovely tour of Autry House and Palmer Church with Patrick Hall and Michael LaRue:

That’s quite a photogenic little owl, isn’t it? And that’s exactly what I was aiming to capture. It was only when I got back and had a better look at all the pictures from that day that I noticed the Texas Historical Commission plaque. This is just the sort of niggling little detail that tends to drive me nuts but I never had enough spare time to track down when the thing went up. (Yes, I know that somewhere somehow there’s a simple way to find the answer but I have no interest whatsoever in simple answers.)

Then last week while searching for something else I stumbled upon the very thing that links the before and after pictures:

I wasn’t even surprised to see our own Stephen Fox and the late, lamented Ray Watkin Hoagland Strange mixed up in this affair. Now I can file those pictures away.

Bonus: For one of the more startling coincidences I’ve come across at the Rice History Corner take a look at this post about the predecessor to Autry House and in particular check out Reverend Hall’s comment.

Melissa, Very interesting! My late husband, O. Jack Mitchell, Dean of the School of Architecture, served on the lard of Autry House for many years. He was a friend of Ray Hoagland and a fan and supporter of Stephen Fox.